6. Respuestas a la evolución del mercado laboral: las agencias
6.3. Las Empresas de Trabajo Temporal: contexto y significado
In this chapter I shall draw together the key elements of this thesis, I shall focus on what I have learnt with regards to students’ perceptions of employability and professionalism. Areas for curriculum development will be outlined based on my interpretations of the data and literature. I shall consider my methodological approach and the way this has supported me to collect, analyse and explore data. The intersection of methodology and data will also be a focus as I consider my data set and how it may be shared and understood by others. Finally, I shall map my development as a researcher by reflect ing on my research journey.
Considerations for Professional Practice
The categories and sub-categories that were shown on the maps helped to support my understanding of students’ perceptions of professionalism and employability. The most common discussions in the interviews and focus group were around personal values and attributes, how these led to career choice and contributed to or aligned with professional values.
Professionalism and employability were hard to define from the data set and this is supported in the literature, but there were a number of factors that were frequently raised. In terms of professionalism and the formation of professional identity, clinical or practice based placements were significant, particularly for identity formation; role models were also significant. The authenticity of practice / learning experiences was a contributing factor to professional socialisation. Positive feelings about professional regulation were shared and a sense of belonging was created by being part of a profession tied to a body such as the College of Occupational Therapy. Codes of conduct and standards again were viewed positively and were not perceived to be constraining as some of the literature proposes. Skills acquired through engagement in teaching and learning activities were valued in the context of employability with team working, presentation and communication skills all being cited as relevant to feeling prepared and confident when obtaining a job.
Curriculum Development
The programme that I currently teach on has a five yearly review as part of institutional quality assurance procedures. If major changes are made to module content, programme structure, delivery or assessment then a re-accreditation is triggered by the professional
148 body the Health and Care Professions Council. The increased understandings gained from undertaking this study will be used to inform this programme review to enhance the student experience. In a National Union of Students Report, produced as part of a Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education project into enhancing student experience, hearing student voices and involving them in their programmes was considered to be important. More students wanted to be involved in shaping content, so as part of a re-accreditation process the use of these findings, which reflect student views, will be made explicit.
“
52.1% of students said that they were involved or somewhat involved in helping to shape the content of their course, compared to 75% who would like to be. Around a fifth of students said they would like to be involved by either being a course rep or by being involved in setting the assessment criteria. Many students commented that they didn’t really understand how they could get involved in developing their course and that this was not made explicit to them when they started their course.”(http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/Documents/Stude
nt-Experience-Research-2012-Part-1.pdf accessed 30 July 2012)
Modular and programme level data is frequently collected but the level of detail gained through the focus group and interviews has supported my understanding and has given me some inspiration for moving forwards. The areas that appear to be the most pertinent were concluded in the previous chapter and are as follows:-
The consideration of authenticity in teaching and learning experiences, extending the use of role models to support the formation of a prospective identity
To review the support and development needs of the Practice Placement Educators who facilitate and assess learning on placement
The importance of mapping a personal and professional development trajectory across the programme to explicitly, show, track and assess professional development and to support identity formation
The inclusion of a more direct focus on professionalism, attempting to define and teach it and to support ethical identity formation
The enhancement of employability activities and teaching including preparation for transition / preceptorship.
149 Methodological Considerations
I feel the way I have critiqued and engaged in debates around methodological issues is original and may add to the field of qualitative research. I shall summarise the main points that I feel are significant in relation to this.
The discussions I have had in this thesis around the tensions between what I term contamination, the researchers’ influence of the research process and the creativity that finally enabled me to truly engage in that process is the first important consideration. The guidance of grounded theory and some of my preconceived ideas, perhaps related to my allied health background where evidence-based approaches are considered good practice, had ingrained some ideas of ‘proper’ research being more closely related to positivism. My struggle with bias and objectivity initially reflected this I think (St Pierre and Roulston 2006). As the study progressed I allowed myself to be creative, to venture into the borderlands and understood that my influence on the process would be present despite the strategies I employed to constrain it. I made my own paradigm shift and felt liberated. The concept proposed by Luca (2009) of ‘embodied bracketing’ resonated and I was able to find a way of using my knowledge and experience, acknowledging its presence, using it as a data set in itself, as a point of reference and to support the collection and analysis process. My knowledge of the programme, my relationships with the participants, my understanding of literature in the field, itself another data set and my experiences of teaching for over 10 years could add to this project. I have attempted to be more explicit throughout the thesis about where I think this influence is evident, these sites of contamination and my consideration of possible sites of silence have added to the integrity of this research.
The Intersection between Methodology and Data
The use of situational and relational maps (Clarke 2005) were useful tools for me to develop a better relationship with my data. They provided a tool deal with my frustrations with modernist grounded theory whilst holding on to the aspects of it that suited this study and my approach. The coding practices outlined by Glaser and Strauss (1967) became mechanistic and awkward for me. I felt uncomfortable with the “decontextualisation and fragmentation of interview data” (Nespor and Barylske 1991 :810 in St Pierre and Roulston 2006:677). Although I still coded and categorised data, I used the maps to attempt to show my data, to demonstrate my assumptions with regards to the relationships between categories and sub-categories and to enable me to also put
150 in data which did not easily fit within a category rather than force it to fit or omit it. Complexity and difference is represented Clarke (2005), as far as is possible in this two dimensional structure.
This then enabled me to view the transcripts differently. I was able to revisit transcripts and access data and narratives to enrich the categories and sub-categories making them more detailed and more grounded in data. Categories and sub-categories are considered as examples, based on MacLure’s (2010) ideas of theory as examples. The maps show my attempts to formulate a more coherent overview of the data, although by the nature of the ‘capture’ and the order imposed by drawing boundaries, the dynamic nature of the narrative is lost. The maps enabled a partial, temporal and situated reading to be made by both the map-maker and the map-reader.
The maps enabled the text / discourses / data to be viewed in context, the research focus of professionalism / employability could not be extrapolated from the context, as meaning would be lost. Foregrounding the context, as part of the analytical processes felt appropriate. The dynamics of the relationships between myself and the other people and categories on the map, the intersubjective spaces (Biesta 1998) where discourse happens between data and myself is visible on the relational maps.
I propose, after considering the work of Derrida (1978), Lacan (1977) and Zizek (1989) that meanings in the maps are temporarily fixed, deliberately quilted into the map with the acknowledgement that the map provides only a snapshot of the research area, which is situated in a dynamic context. The meaning will wander as soon as a different position on the map is taken, that is to say with each reading of the map. If the categories and narrative excerpts are the signifiers that link together the text on the map to make meaning, then the meaning is undoubtedly contaminated by me as the researcher as I have privileged and labelled data. My interpretation of meaning in the maps is somewhat clarified by seeing all the categories and sub-categories laid out on the page, the meaning behind the labels given is enhanced both by understanding what was not meant by the label, by comparison to others on the map and by the additional quotes and narratives that I was able to add to the discussion. This was also enhanced by comparison to existing themes in literature. The maps do not stand in isolation and should be viewed in an interconnected way but the separation of them into category maps makes the reading and sharing of my data easier and therefore accessible.
151 Use of the maps and reflection on the process led to me question how a research object comes into being, if I support the notion of the wandering of meaning and the re-reading or re-drawing of maps. Harvey (1989) questions notions of privileging time over space in relation to social change processes and he suggests that we assume a pre-existing spacial order within which, temporal aspects operate. The notion that time is privileged over space is challenged by the maps; time is stuttered through the capture / reading of the map where temporarily meaning is fixed. The space however remains explicit and fundamental to the reading of the map.
The categories and sub-categories serve as examples, their meaning may be temporarily fixed, yet deferred by a reader who will come with their own conceptual spectacles and experiences and may associate with a particular position on the map, influencing the reading of it. The boundaries on the map are to help representation but are porous and there are leakages out of categories on to other categories and other maps. By foregrounding context the meaning again will be in flux reflecting the dynamic background the context provides. The maps cannot truly represent the experiences of the participants but may offer some insights which, combined with my professional knowledge and experience, can support me to formulate examples which can influence practice and policy.
Contribution to Methodology
To summarise I feel my unique contribution to methodology comes through my transgression of classical grounded theory and my reappropriation of the methodology. I have told the story of becoming a researcher and how research data become situated in context, where meaning may be temporarily fixed in space and time. My development of situational analysis proposing more fluid three dimensional maps, more complex relationships between categories, a more spherical and porous boundaries with leakages, develops thinking in the field of data analysis in grounded theory. My engagement with modernist and postmodern ideas is original and creative. In mapping my journey as a researcher I have been able to further explore the role of the researcher in the research process and have provided exemplars of how I engaged in activities in the borderlands attempting to be creative whilst holding on to structure, struggling with representation of participants voices and strategies to maintain accessibility of the data. This thesis is a methodological thesis, but throughout I have narrated the empirical components of this study.
152 The diversity of qualitative research generally and differences in grounded theory studies specifically, leads to difficulties in defining the criteria against which this study is judged to be credible and of value (Freeman et al 2007). I have demonstrated awareness of these issues throughout this thesis and outline my own criteria against which I believe the study can be judged. These are authenticity, rigour and ethical integrity.
In terms of authenticity my study can be deemed to be persuasive. The narrative excerpts, maps and literature combine together for illustrative purposes. Depth is provided by being able to link map to map and categories and sub-categories to each other and to the narratives on the transcripts. They form examples around which the exploration of professionalism unfolds. My claims bound in data exemplify my interpretations.
In terms of rigour and ethical integrity, I have been critically reflective and have accounted for my research decisions regarding collection, analysis and representation throughout this thesis. I have been clear about my role and struggles as a researcher and have highlighted limitations. These relate to possible sites of contamination, the way in which I influence data collection, analysis and reconstruct it and in terms of sites of silence, issues of power, inequality, oppression and praxis (Lather 1991, 2004) as a researcher researching the students who I teach.
The qualities or characteristics I have outlined to demonstrate my consideration of rigour and authenticity will also be subject to reinterpretation and reconstruction by the readers of this thesis and will be framed by political, contextual, academic and social factors which are subject to change (Smith and Deemer 2000).
Professionalism and Employability
I also feel I have made an original contribution in the field of occupational therapy by further understanding the areas of professionalism and employability. The recommendations I have made perhaps over simplify complex and problematic concepts. There is no clear agreement in literature or from my data, regarding teaching strategies and methods of assessment for professionalism or what definitive skills, attributes or behaviours an employable occupational therapy graduate might display.
153 The examples created in my study however do give some insights into the formative and significant teaching and learning experiences that have enhanced feelings of competence, professionalism and preparedness for employment. One of the most interesting areas revolves around competence and identity, it is clear that role models play a part and authentic communities of practice help shape professional identity. The notion of a prospective identity was new to me and viewing a trajectory along which development could be mapped and an individual’s prospective identity created and moulded is something which I hope to translate into the curriculum. My situated claim around the alignment of personal and professional values has also been significant. If possessing or developing these values correlates with a sense of professionalism then selecting future occupational therapists in relation to their values, or at least a commitment to the development of those values, could be an interesting project to move forward with.
One of the most contentious areas perhaps is in relation to notions of professionalism versus external regulation and standards. How do we teach individual therapists who will have varying attributes, competencies, experiences and interests and encourage these individuals to flourish whilst also meeting uniform standards set by professional bodies and statutory organisations? This will be an issue for ongoing discussion, it is clear that the attainment of standards of proficiency is essential as a threshold into the workforce. Individualised and monitored personal development planning that enables the attainment of these set standards and supports students to use their experience and interests to enrich their overall teaching and learning experience will be one suggestion to resolve these tensions.
Contribution to Practice
This thesis has used narrative and situational mapping to explore the complex construct of professionalism for the participants in the study. Through this employability, competence, professional identity and professional development have also been explored. Understanding the dynamics of these factors and the critical experiences for participants will as I have outlined, impact on curriculum development. These issues will influence the pedagogy of occupational therapy. It has become clear that students value role models; staff are both occupational therapists and teachers, given the importance of role models students may place more value on the former and as teaching professionals we need to make our practice based roles and experience more overt. The
154 participant’s narrative and the narrative of myself, as an occupational therapist and teacher are situated in a meta-narrative of professionalism. Narratives are personalised and reconstructed by experience, audience and context. Understanding that the grand narrative of professionalism needs to be learnt, through explicit teaching and assessment activities, whilst also valuing and guiding the development of personal narratives, through individualised and one to one development activities, is important. The unique contribution to practice is in relation to the development of this new pedagogy for occupational therapy.
Reflections on my Development
The themes that resonate throughout this thesis include contamination, liberation and creativity; these themes I feel are closely linked to my development as a researcher from novice to experienced, this thesis tells that tale of becoming a researcher. The shift from rigid observance of guidance regarding tools for collection and analysis to a more mature and reasoned approach where I have been able to appraise the value of tools, guidance and theory to ascertain their value and usefulness to me in the context of my study. I am now able to make decisions and judgements with more confidence. I am able to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity. Some of that confidence also correlates with practical nature of doing the research, the more activities I have undertaken as part of the research process, the more convinced I became regarding my ability to complete the thesis. I started from a position where I felt completely out of my depth and almost debilitated by choices and literature (regarding ontological, epistemological and methodological aspects) to a position where I can engage more critically with the research process and move towards completion of this thesis.
Intervening as a Professional
There were issues with regards to intervening as a professional which relate to